cigazze, CC BY 4.0
Both are pea-family trees with hanging pods, planted in gardens and parks.
The quickest check is the leaflets on one leaf. Honey locust: up to 18 pairs of small leaflets. Laburnum: three, each about 6 cm. No leaves on the tree? Check the flowers.
| Look at | Honey locust | Laburnum |
|---|---|---|
| Leaflets on one leaf | Up to 18 pairs of small leaflets | Three, each about 6 cm |
| Flowers | Thin tails of tiny greenish white flowers | Hanging chains of golden yellow pea flowers |
Honey locust is a slender, open tree with feathery leaves of many small leaflets, often bright yellow when young. Most planted in Britain are thornless. The ordinary thorny kind, rare in Britain, carries clumps of long spines on its trunk.
How to identify honey locust →Laburnum is a small tree with a narrow, sparse crown and leaves of three leaflets. In May, chains of golden yellow pea flowers up to 25 cm long hang from it.
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Every fact on this page is checked against the Collins Tree Guide, last in November 2026. Spotted something that looks wrong in front of a real tree? Tell us. How we check.
Photographs: cigazze (CC BY 4.0), steve_mcwilliam (CC0), Sandy Wolkenberg (CC BY 4.0), sturuss (CC0). With thanks to everyone who shares their photographs on iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons.
